


Things I won't say

by andaleduardo



Series: Richie & Eddie - requests [7]
Category: IT (2017), IT (2019), IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Denial of Feelings, Falling In Love, Feelings Realization, Idiot Eddie Kaspbrak, It's a little sad, M/M, Oblivious Richie Tozier, at first
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-28
Updated: 2019-09-29
Packaged: 2020-10-29 23:22:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,093
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20804675
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andaleduardo/pseuds/andaleduardo
Summary: Eddie is hit with his feelings for Richie like a brick to the face. The only logical solution is to walk away every time they cross paths, right?It's what he does either way.





	1. part one

**Author's Note:**

> A prompt requested on tumblr: “You know, you can only run for so long before you accidentally do a lap around the bullshit you’re trying so hard to avoid.”

It’s been 9 days.  
9 days, 16 hours and 32 minutes to be more precise, but who’s counting? Eddie surely isn’t.

It’s just that he remembers the starting point too well, too much. The exact moment air became unbreathable because it carried a scary thought, a hard truth and the unfortunate reality. 

Eddie knew it had always been there, his feelings, they always tormented him from the back of his head. But they were usually whispers because he could keep them little and unimportant. He could push them away into nothingness.

Until he couldn’t anymore.

Until those little, shy thoughts started to scream and jam against his skull from the inside, tearing away at the bone and deafening the outside from Eddie’s consciousness.

One second he’s casually hanging with his friends, leaning on Richie’s side while the boy has an arm around his shoulders, like usual. The next, though, he’s thinking about reaching up with his own hand to interlace their fingers. Thinking about turning his head to the side and burying his face on the skin of Richie’s neck, without a care in the world for oxygen intake. Thinking about how it would be if he were allowed to do that, do more, do everything. Kiss him, hold him, tell him things without being afraid, touching parts of Richie he never touched before. And by that he means the back of his ears, every strand of hair, the bumps on his knees and ankles, the scabs on his knuckles, the corners of his eyes where they crease to give room for a smile.

And that’s when the time counting begun, when everything became too much too handle and Eddie pushed Richie away as if his freckles burned against him or something. It felt like that, but the truth is that the burning sensation was probably coming from the inside. It hurt either way, so Eddie left, but it kept on hurting.

So Eddie kept on leaving. 

The first time, Richie asked him why he left so suddenly and Eddie lied.

The second time, Richie wanted to know if he did something to upset him and Eddie pretended not to hear.

The third time, Richie told him he was worried and that he knew something wasn’t right, so, Eddie ran away.

And each time Richie came back, looking for him to try and understand what happened, what changed, why Eddie was avoiding him, why they didn’t talk anymore, Eddie left.

And he left and left and left again as soon as he saw Richie in the distance. The hurt never leaves. It only increases with each and every heartbroken look Richie throws at him.

With all honesty, he doesn’t understand why Richie keeps trying. Eddie has been nothing but a real asshole for the past 9 days. And no, he really isn’t counting, life is just more memorable when it’s miserable. 

But Richie does, in fact, keep trying. Every day for the past week he tried to get the two of them alone. Either by waiting for him at the end of a class, following him to the bathroom or kidnapping him before lunch period. And for each and every one of those tries Eddie lied, or brushed it off, or pretended everything was okay. Only to keep on sitting far away from Richie, moving away when the other boy tried to touch him and turning down all the invitations to go spend a afternoon at his house.

It’s easier to do that and deal with his feelings alone than to have to deal with them by Richie’s side. The feelings always get the best of him and he can’t chance it to do something incredibly stupid and _really _ruin their friendship.

Today is another casual Friday, and Eddie isn’t surprised to be pulled aside after lunch.

“Can we walk home together after class?” Richie asks him with that same hopeful eyes that tear at Eddie’s chest every time.

Eddie nods, far too aware of how his elbow burns from Richie’s hands wrapped around it. “Sure.” He says. But he knows it won’t happen.

Luckily, Richie isn’t waiting for him outside of Eddie’s classroom when last period ends. It will be easier this way. Eddie just has to blend with the wave of students making their way to main entrance, and surely Richie would be waiting for him by the Losers’ designated meeting point.

But as soon as Eddie gets to walking, he sees Richie on the other side of the hallway making his way in the opposite direction of all the students. In Eddie’s direction. 

_“Shit.”_

He considers ducking down, but their eyes already met and Richie’s mouth curves into a soft smile. The next logical solution is to turn around and run. Eddie is the worst person in the world and yet, he still can’t find the courage to stop his legs from moving, hoping Richie doesn’t follow him but hoping he does at the same time.

Richie does follow him, as expected, and it is only a matter of seconds until Eddie is being pushed inside a storage closet and being surrounded by darkness with Richie mere centimeters away from him.

Eddie tries to level his breathing while Richie curses and hits his hands on shelves looking for the light switch. Is this worse than walking home with Richie? Yes, one might think so.

Eventually, Richie finds the switch and a poor yellow light covers the little room. They blink multiple times trying to get used to the weird color of the lamp. Richie looks slightly green under it.

“What the fuck?” Richie says. “You agreed to meet me after class and you were just going to ditch me and leave me there for God knows how long after you left?” 

Eddie looks away in shame, eyes landing on the door and calculating how many seconds it would take him to turn the handle and bolt.

“Eddie, for fuck’s sake talk to me, would’ya?” He sounds desperate and tired, Eddie can’t blame him. “You keep telling me nothing’s wrong, big fucking lie, but you can’t just look me in the eye and tell me what it is I’ve done? ‘Cause I’m pretty sure I fucked up my last brain cells trying to understand where I fucked up and made you want to stop being my friend.”

It hurts so much to hear it. Eddie wants to scream and kick the mop bucket by the door. 

_I don’t want to stop being your friend! The problem is I want to be more than that, you asshole, and then _you_ wouldn’t want to be _my _friend. That’s the fucking problem._

But all Eddie can do is switch his trembling gaze between Richie’s eyes, trying to somehow speak with his mind since his mouth doesn’t cooperate.

“Eddie, I-” Richie sighs through his open mouth, a devastated and tired look taking over his features. “I don’t know what else to do-**_ You know, you can only run for so long before you accidentally do a lap around the bullshit you’re trying so hard to avoid.”_**

Breathing becomes harder again. Eddie should say something now, he should stop being an ass and just tell Richie he did nothing wrong, that the only one to blame for this was Eddie, and that he was sorry. 

After a while in silence, Richie smiles tightly and stuffs both hands in the pocket of his sweater. “I get it.”

“You do?” Eddie asks in shock.

“Oh, so he speaks.” Richie jokes, but then deflates. “I mean, you clearly don’t want to talk to me, or be around me. Sorry that I’ve been annoying you with this, it’s just that- I really wish I could make things good again. But I’ll stop, I promise. If you really don’t want to be my friend anymore or whatever, I’ll stop chasing you. So you’re a free man, now.”

_No- No, no no no. _This isn’t supposed to happen. Eddie wants to smack himself really hard.. _Just say something, Eddie!_

“So, hum…I’ll still be waiting if you ever want to- ” Richie stops himself mid sentence and swallows his words, one hand already on the doorknob. “...Yeah, anyway. See you later, Eddie.”

And for the first time in 9 days, Eddie doesn’t run away. Instead, he watches his best friend leave.


	2. part two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is for the ones who asked me for a 2nd part, it's super short and shitty in my opinion but I have 0 time and I really wanted to finish it this weekend so I’m sorry about that...

It took Eddie 3 days to come find him.

It was Monday and Richie was just about to leave his last class of the day only to be met by the sight of Eddie getting up from the floor in a rush as Richie came out the door.

A smile crept up on his face when he saw Eddie dusting his pants off with a grossed out grimace, but it fell just as quickly as Eddie opened his mouth with a shy “Hi.” A pained smile on his face.

“Hey.” Richie said. He watched Eddie struggle with what to say for a bit before deciding to intervene. “How come you’re here? I thought you had a class now, too.”

“Uh” a blush formed on Eddie’s cheeks. “I did…but I left earlier. Had to run from my seat to the door before the teacher had a chance to say something.” He mumbled the sentence and glued the words to each other. After hearing the way Eddie speaks for so long, Richie came to understand everything the boy said.

“Ah, so you’re on the run, now.” Richie joked without much will to do so. “What’s up?”

Eddie looked him in the eye and spoke as confidently as he could. “Walk me home?”

Richie complied gladly, although he promised himself not to indulge in one of his hopeless apologies over things he didn’t have a clue about. So, he waited every minute it took Eddie to start speaking, which was a total of 9.

9 full minutes of walking meant they were around halfway to their neighbourhood. Don’t get him wrong, Richie would be more than pleased to just walk in silence by Eddie’s side, he was sure he’d be day-dreaming about it later while doing homework. Probably to overthink the possibility that Eddie was back to ‘normal’ and they could be friends again.

But, at last, Eddie spoke.

“I’m sorry.”

They were casually walking their bikes and Richie had to grip the handles harder to keep himself from looking at Eddie. God knows he’d say something and that would ruin Eddie’s chance to finally talk about whatever was bothering him.

“I never meant to ruin our friendship and the trust you have in me, or had.” Eddie explained. “I’ve just been dealing with some stuff… it was overwhelming and I ended up acting like a jerk.”

Richie nodded. “I understand… but how come you only acted like a jerk to me? At least from what I could tell, everything seemed fine between you and the others.” Their steps were slowing down and Richie didn’t stop himself from looking at Eddie anymore.

Eddie avoided his eyes for a moment. “I- I’m not sure I’m ready to talk about that, yet.” Then, he stared into Richie’s eyes. “But I promise I won’t let this or anything else get between us again, I swear. It’s just something unimportant, what really matters to me is that you’re still my friend.”

Richie softened up from Eddie’s apprehensive speech. “Of course, Eds. We’re all allowed to have our secrets and keep things to ourselves. But you can’t let that ruin the rest of your life, you know. I’ll always be your friend as long as you want me to.”

Eddie’s eyes looked sad. “And I’ll always want you to be my friend, Rich, trust me. Even if I end up doing something stupid… I hope we can always be friends.”

“Then you got nothing to worry about.” Richie said kindly, letting his bike drop by his side and wrapping his arms around Eddie’s shoulders in a hug. Eddie stiffened before hugging him back with all his strength, his own bike forgotten as well.

“I’m sorry…” Eddie squeezed it out out from his throat, nothing more than a whisper.

“Don’t worry about it, Eds. It’s in the past.”

Letting Richie’s kind words sink in, Eddie rested his chin on his shoulder and looked ahead with tears in his eyes.   
It’s not in the past and maybe it would never be, but everything would be okay like this. In the embrace of someone he’d rather have as a friend than to not have at all.

_Yeah,_ Eddie thought, _we’ll be okay._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know it’s not the happy ending everyone wanted but it’s still a happy ending, and I won’t do a 3rd part because I like this ending too and I hope everyone can forgive me for it.
> 
> I might make this into a single chaptered thing in the future.

**Author's Note:**

> yES I am going to make a part 2 like requested by a lot of people on tumblr so don't come at me
> 
> college is a sh** but I'll get it done
> 
> Thank you for reading and I'd love to know what you think :)


End file.
